7. Five Points on Developing the Elements Of A Sadhana

Today I have just five points;  one long one, and four short ones.  Two of the short ones are virtually the same point.  There are probably many more points that could be made, but for now, these are the main five to remember. 

1. Remember the Mind-only View.  As a way of getting into the world of visualisation, remember that you are mind, remember that all is mind, and remember that mind is inconceivable.   If you remember those three things as much as possible, you are always much closer to visualisation, because you are continually aware that you ‘visualise’ your waking world, too.  The world and the spiritual life come alive when you remember the mind-only View.

2. Be clear as to which Practice to do.  Bhante has said ‘do your Sadhana every day.’ This simple dictum sometimes arouses conflict.  If we are poorly prepared, how can we do our Sadhana properly?  Yet if we do the Metta Bhavana or Mindfulness of Breathing instead, when will we find time to do our Sadhana? 

Such conflict arises out of a narrow conception of the meaning of sadhana practice. As far as I know, the word ‘sadhana’ is used in two senses.  On the one hand ‘a Sadhana’ is a particular visualisation of a Buddha or Bodhisattva; on the other, ‘sadhana’ is all your spiritual practices conceived together, as one totality.  In this latter sense all your practices are part of your sadhana. So once you have been initiated into a visualisation Sadhana, then Mindfulness of Breathing, Metta Bhavana, Just Sitting, the Six Element Practice, Mula Yoga practices – all the meditations you do – become part of the build up to, and the support for, the visualisation Sadhana. 

This does not mean that you can do the Mindfulness of Breathing  every day and that counts as your Sadhana.  If you did that, you would start losing touch with the visualisation from day one.  Samatha practices are an important part of your sadhana, conceived as the overall totality of your spiritual discipline, but if we never did the visualisation Sadhana, our practice would revert to the stage prior to ordination. Bhante’s injunction means that we must keep the visualisation Sadhana alive once it has been given.  It is not simply a question of a daily run-through of the Sadhana as given, and virtually giving up on other practices.  If that were the sum of our meditation, most people would start running dry almost immediately.  Nor is it a reliance only on other practices such as that of the Six Elements or the Metta Bhavana.

If our overall practice reverted to these, we would lose the special connection with our tradition, with our preceptor, and of course with the yidam, which marked our initiation and which carries the karmic ‘charge’ of our effective Going for Refuge.  Our initiation is a vital turning point.  If we ever lose touch with the yidam into whose sadhana we have been initiated, we may lose our whole ground for confidence and faith in our spiritual development beyond our current stage.  It does quite often happen – luckily we can always get it back again.  If we do ever realise that that is what we have done, we should take steps to regain the connection as soon as possible. 

The reason it is always possible to regain the connection is because the initiation itself cannot be undone.  It did actually happen, after all:  we did Go for Refuge, and the sincerity of our commitment was witnessed by one who also Goes for Refuge.  So the pledge which we make with the yidam, to do their practice and develop their Enlightened Qualities, is an unbreakable pledge. It’s like the metal bowl of the Mahayana which can be bent and battered but not broken, or the diamond bowl of the Vajrayana whose surface cannot even be scratched by our backslidings and downfalls.

So if to ‘do our sadhana every day’ doesn’t mean doing just the sadhana, then what does it mean? And if that is exactly what I have been doing, what does that mean?  Perhaps I should retract what I have said, just slightly.  I think it is conceivable that there are some Order members who can simply do the sadhana as given, and no other meditation at all, week in and week out, and not lose their inspiration for their developing spiritual life. Yet I think these are rare creatures who cannot serve as a model for all Order members.  I think the solution to the problem boils down to this: that most of us cannot really get by on just one meditation session a day.  We need two, as a minimum – or at the very least, we need to have several supplementary meditation sessions throughout the week, say at weekends or odd evenings.  Otherwise we will probably start feeling trapped between those dreaded and familiar pincers:  between the need to do the Sadhana as given, and maintain a connection with the initiation, and the feeling that our fading samatha, and lack of reflection on the Dharma in other ways, is draining our enthusiasm and faith in the Sadhana as given.

As we have seen, there are many elements to the visualisation Sadhana which need to be kept alive.  In particular, I have mentioned the image as image, the image as person, and the image as void.  It may well be possible to explore and deepen all these by simply doing the visualisation Sadhana, as given, each day, and doing no other meditation.  I would imagine that you could do this, in fact, for a month or two after a retreat like this.  But in general, it is far better not to rely on a momentum gained from peak experiences to carry you through. That is a something of a drug mentality – getting some kind of boost, living on it until the momentum wears off, and then looking out for another boost.  Retreats should not be boosters, even though they often are.  It is far, far better to work out a way of life which will develop the sadhana from the inside, so that when you do go on retreat it is not that you have had to go on retreat.  You have not needed a retreat to get back your inspiration; you have simply decided to go on retreat because retreat conditions will deepen your existing practice. 

The way of life which you need to work out is one which maintains all the elements of sadhana; one in which all the meditations that you do, including the full visualisation Sadhana, contribute to an overall sadhana dedicated to realising the Enlightened Qualities of the Buddha. 

So in your other sessions of meditation you can choose to do the Mindfulness of Breathing, the Metta Bhavana, the Just Sitting, the Six Element Practice or reflections on the Nidanas or Impermanence, or the Mula Yoga practices of Going for Refuge, Bodhicitta, Vajrasattva purification, Mandala Offering and Yoga of Kalyanamitrata.  There’s a lot there.  How much of any of them you do depends on the time you make available.  You can do three or four of them on a regular basis and build up a particular quality, or you can do a variety.  Variety is no bad thing.  Sometimes we can shy away from variety for good reasons, because we don’t want to base our most important activity on the whim of the moment.  Though true I think this approach can be over-rated, and applied in a stultifying way.  I think our enthusiasm and interest depends to some extent on feeling free to explore a range of spiritual practice.  We have so many practices now, and especially if you include the Mula Yogas, that we cannot develop them all in a systematic way.  I think we would definitely err towards the extreme of over-diversification if we did all ten of the supplementary practices I mentioned (actually there are quite a few more around, and I haven’t even mentioned puja).  But we might also err towards the opposite extreme if we only did the Metta Bhavana, for example, as a supplementary.

But I only say ‘might’ err towards that extreme because the point I am trying to get at is not about doing particular practices at all.  You really could do just the Sadhana, if you could really develop it on its own.  My point is that our attitude towards the supplementary practices we do do should be that we do them in order to develop our sadhana as a whole.  We do the Mindfulness of Breathing  because clarity, contentment and simplicity of vision are an important aspect of the Bodhisattva whose qualities we are trying to bring alive in ourselves.  We do the Six Element practice, or some other vipassana meditation, because it brings to life the vipassana element of the Sadhana.  Maybe we do the Kalyanamitra Yoga because it brings alive the element of presence in the Sadhana.  And that is the kind of reason why we do any of the other practices. 

So all that was the second point, on ‘being clear as to which practice to do.’  The principle here is that you need be clear as to why you are doing them. 

3. Find ways of discussing your Sadhana with trusted friends in the Order.  I won’t say much about this – it’s just that it can really help.  And the next point is an extension of the same issue.

4. Stay in touch with your Preceptor regarding your meditation.  I think it is possible to spend time with your preceptor, and the communication is not about meditation, and that’s not because he is not interested in your meditation, but it’s because you don’t mention it and he doesn’t find an opportunity to mention it.  Time with him is usually limited.  I think you will find that on the whole, discussing your meditation takes you into deeper communication, and that on the whole you can rely on your preceptor being very interested.  

5. Make the link with the rest of your life.  Remember continually what the link is.  The link is the Dharma, the practice of developing the qualities of the Buddha.  Your Sadhana is an aspect – you could say the central aspect – of your practice of the Dharma.   The rest of your life – your work, leisure, cultural and social life – is (of course) not separate from your practice of the Dharma.  So be mindful all the time that you are a practitioner of the Dharma, that you have been initiated into its practice, and that therefore you want to deepen its realisation.

I think there are several more points which could be made on this occasion, but perhaps that will do for the time being.   I think we have the most important ones here.  So to summarise now: Remember the mind-only View; Be clear as to which practice to do; Find ways of discussing your Sadhana with trusted friends in the Order; and Stay in touch with your preceptor regarding your meditation.

I hope your practice thrives during the next few days and also into the rest of your lives when the retreat is over.